5 Reasons You Should Consider A Full-Service Voice of the Customer Solution

There is no questioning it; we are living in the age of the customer. This means that marketers need to better understand customers and shift to a customer-centric mindset. The most effective way to understand your customers’ intentions, needs and experiences is through running a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program.

Many digital marketers think that a self-serve survey tool is sufficient to run a VoC program. In reality, to get the most value out of the voice of your customers, it requires an experienced team to manage the diverse aspects of a digital VoC program, from implementation experts to research analysts. However, employing a full-time internal team to support your VoC program can be expensive. Also you might need a large team at the beginning as it can be an undertaking to properly launch a VoC solution across multiple websites and countries. But as your VoC program evolves you might not need as many staff, so you need the ability to scale to justify the return on investment.

That’s why a first-class VoC solution provider will not only offer a full range of feedback capabilities, but a fully-serviced option with access to a team of experts who are invested in ensuring that your program delivers a return on your investment. This allows experts to handle your VoC program so you can focus on your business and what you do best.

Here are 5 reasons why you should consider having a fully-serviced VoC solution managed by VoC experts as opposed to an entirely self-serviced VoC solution:

1. No learning curve

A strong VoC solution provider will provide you with access to an experienced team who has implemented and managed countless VoC programs ranging in complexity. This means that the team is already ‘power users’ of the platform eliminating, the learning curve so you don’t have to spend any time to get up and running. Also with an expert team behind you, anytime you need to launch a new survey you will get it right the first time and every time.

Think of this expert team as your very own ‘pit crew’ that knows all the ins and outs of the platform and how to squeeze the greatest value out of your VoC program based on your business needs.

2. Objective voice

Information is powerful, however, it is also controversial. One of the greatest obstacles to obtaining insights from VoC is the objectivity of the results.

The query… ‘what questions were used, who wrote them and why?’... often becomes an unnecessary distraction with custom questionnaire design. With the proliferation of self-serve survey tools available today, everyone in the company seems to have results to a survey that argues for their preferred agenda. With an independent expert designing your survey, you will not only get actionable results, but also alignment around questionnaire design and objectivity of results.

3. Adapt the best practices to your needs

Survey tools today provide various self-serve capabilities, ranging from skip logic and branching, to providing access to a truckload of survey question templates you can choose from. However, from the wording of your questions to the way you program your survey, there are many things that can have a huge effect on the quality of the data you collect.

A basic example of this concept is the use of a common survey template question, ‘how satisfied are you with company A’. This is a great question but if you don’t have a follow-up question to ask dissatisfied customers as to why they are dissatisfied, you miss out on critical insights that can help you improve the customer experience for these customers. Survey creation is not just about picking a bunch of template questions but having a short, intelligent conversation with your visitors. It is about building your brand and getting better intelligence on your customers.

Every company has different objectives which change over time. The top VoC metrics might not match your business objectives. That’s why it is important to have a professional help you craft your survey who can apply the industry’s best practices to your unique situation.

4. No need for extensive internal or IT resources

Running a VoC program is not a ‘setup and forget’ program. It needs to be constantly monitored to get maximum value. Existing surveys should be regularly managed to ensure that you keep getting the most value out of them, while new, targeted surveys should be launched regularly to dig deeper into specific business challenges.

For example, if data from your global satisfaction survey shows that visitors who came to make a purchase did not do so during their session, you might want to run a new, concurrent survey to better understand the reasons behind their shopping cart abandonment.

Therefore, managing your VoC program properly can typically involve hiring an implementation programmer, BI Reporting Expert and Insight Analyst. This can be costly, especially when you have pressure on your program to deliver results in a short time frame. With a managed VoC solution, you can leverage the solution provider’s resources and their expertise to monitor and drive the program forward and avoid costly delays.

5. Quality assurance

A VoC program is a very public initiative, with your customers being asked to provide feedback directly on your website. So just like with your website, it needs to go through an extensive quality check. Unfortunately, if you have a small team, QA can often be overlooked.

With a managed solution, your VoC solution provider will perform QA to make sure all aspects of your VoC program are running as they should. They will provide you access to an experienced team who is familiar with all aspects of your surveys, and can check not only for spelling and grammar errors, but also problems with implementation, skip logic and branching. Essentially, make your vendor responsible for the quality of the data they give you.

Looking to launch a VoC program?

If you are looking to purchase a VoC solution, make sure that the provider offers managed solutions that gives you access to a team that can offer the support and the expertise you need to make sure your VoC program provides a return on your investment.

With an experienced team that has managed 1000’s of VoC programs since 1999, ipereptions offers managed solutions that can make sure you get the most value from your VoC program. From implementation experts who can help get your program up and running on your website to analysts who can dig into your VoC data to extract actionable recommendations, the ipereptions team can manage your VoC program from A to Z.

Duff Anderson is a visionary in Voice of the Customer research with over 20 years’ experience. As SVP and Co-founder at iperceptions, Duff is responsible for providing expert advice to organizations on how to gain a competitive advantage across the customer lifecycle and improve the customer experience.

5 Reasons You Should Consider A Full-Service Voice of the Customer Solution

There is no questioning it; we are living in the age of the customer. This means that marketers need to better understand customers and shift to a customer-centric mindset. The most effective way to understand your customers’ intentions, needs and experiences is through running a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program.

Many digital marketers think that a self-serve survey tool is sufficient to run a VoC program. In reality, to get the most value out of the voice of your customers, it requires an experienced team to manage the diverse aspects of a digital VoC program, from implementation experts to research analysts. However, employing a full-time internal team to support your VoC program can be expensive. Also you might need a large team at the beginning as it can be an undertaking to properly launch a VoC solution across multiple websites and countries. But as your VoC program evolves you might not need as many staff, so you need the ability to scale to justify the return on investment.

That’s why a first-class VoC solution provider will not only offer a full range of feedback capabilities, but a fully-serviced option with access to a team of experts who are invested in ensuring that your program delivers a return on your investment. This allows experts to handle your VoC program so you can focus on your business and what you do best.

Here are 5 reasons why you should consider having a fully-serviced VoC solution managed by VoC experts as opposed to an entirely self-serviced VoC solution:

1. No learning curve

A strong VoC solution provider will provide you with access to an experienced team who has implemented and managed countless VoC programs ranging in complexity. This means that the team is already ‘power users’ of the platform eliminating, the learning curve so you don’t have to spend any time to get up and running. Also with an expert team behind you, anytime you need to launch a new survey you will get it right the first time and every time.

Think of this expert team as your very own ‘pit crew’ that knows all the ins and outs of the platform and how to squeeze the greatest value out of your VoC program based on your business needs.

2. Objective voice

Information is powerful, however, it is also controversial. One of the greatest obstacles to obtaining insights from VoC is the objectivity of the results.

The query… ‘what questions were used, who wrote them and why?’... often becomes an unnecessary distraction with custom questionnaire design. With the proliferation of self-serve survey tools available today, everyone in the company seems to have results to a survey that argues for their preferred agenda. With an independent expert designing your survey, you will not only get actionable results, but also alignment around questionnaire design and objectivity of results.

3. Adapt the best practices to your needs

Survey tools today provide various self-serve capabilities, ranging from skip logic and branching, to providing access to a truckload of survey question templates you can choose from. However, from the wording of your questions to the way you program your survey, there are many things that can have a huge effect on the quality of the data you collect.

A basic example of this concept is the use of a common survey template question, ‘how satisfied are you with company A’. This is a great question but if you don’t have a follow-up question to ask dissatisfied customers as to why they are dissatisfied, you miss out on critical insights that can help you improve the customer experience for these customers. Survey creation is not just about picking a bunch of template questions but having a short, intelligent conversation with your visitors. It is about building your brand and getting better intelligence on your customers.

Every company has different objectives which change over time. The top VoC metrics might not match your business objectives. That’s why it is important to have a professional help you craft your survey who can apply the industry’s best practices to your unique situation.

4. No need for extensive internal or IT resources

Running a VoC program is not a ‘setup and forget’ program. It needs to be constantly monitored to get maximum value. Existing surveys should be regularly managed to ensure that you keep getting the most value out of them, while new, targeted surveys should be launched regularly to dig deeper into specific business challenges.

For example, if data from your global satisfaction survey shows that visitors who came to make a purchase did not do so during their session, you might want to run a new, concurrent survey to better understand the reasons behind their shopping cart abandonment.

Therefore, managing your VoC program properly can typically involve hiring an implementation programmer, BI Reporting Expert and Insight Analyst. This can be costly, especially when you have pressure on your program to deliver results in a short time frame. With a managed VoC solution, you can leverage the solution provider’s resources and their expertise to monitor and drive the program forward and avoid costly delays.

5. Quality assurance

A VoC program is a very public initiative, with your customers being asked to provide feedback directly on your website. So just like with your website, it needs to go through an extensive quality check. Unfortunately, if you have a small team, QA can often be overlooked.

With a managed solution, your VoC solution provider will perform QA to make sure all aspects of your VoC program are running as they should. They will provide you access to an experienced team who is familiar with all aspects of your surveys, and can check not only for spelling and grammar errors, but also problems with implementation, skip logic and branching. Essentially, make your vendor responsible for the quality of the data they give you.

Looking to launch a VoC program?

If you are looking to purchase a VoC solution, make sure that the provider offers managed solutions that gives you access to a team that can offer the support and the expertise you need to make sure your VoC program provides a return on your investment.

With an experienced team that has managed 1000’s of VoC programs since 1999, ipereptions offers managed solutions that can make sure you get the most value from your VoC program. From implementation experts who can help get your program up and running on your website to analysts who can dig into your VoC data to extract actionable recommendations, the ipereptions team can manage your VoC program from A to Z.

Duff Anderson is a visionary in Voice of the Customer research with over 20 years’ experience. As SVP and Co-founder at iperceptions, Duff is responsible for providing expert advice to organizations on how to gain a competitive advantage across the customer lifecycle and improve the customer experience.

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